Month: April 2013

We usually have quite a few beta sites up before moving to a release candidate but having over 10,000 beta systems out there is a bit of a record:) … maybe a little embarrassing that we did not ‘deem’ it release candidate quality some time ago. With all that said though, we have now rolled the release candidate and given how heavily 2.11 has been tested and is in production, it’s simply a formality and we should be moving to final release within a week or so!

The 2.11 release has been a bit of a ‘victim’ of feature creep which has caused a somewhat perpetual cycle. As time went be we added features ranging from the [url=/news/2012-11-05/2-11-beta-1-release-is-out]new popOver ability[/url] to many new modules ranging from Motif (google voice) to a DAHDi configuration to [url=http://www.freepbx.org/news/2013-01-23/launch-of-commercial-pbx-endpoint-manager]the commercial endpoint manager[/url] and the list goes on. As these features and new modules kept pouring in we of course kept prolonging the beta cycle. It’s important to us when we say something is production ready, it really is … even though over 10,000 of you seem pretty happy with what’s there:)

For those of you running 2.10 and prior, never fear, we’ll release the 2.10 to 2.11 upgrade tool tomorrow which will give you easy GUI access to migrate your 2.10 and prior systems.

[b]OTTS Training at Digium Headquarters[/b]

Tony [url=/news/2013-03-12/open-telephony-training-seminar-may-2013-huntsville-alabama]blogged[/url] about the [url=/training]upcoming training at Digium Headquarters in Huntsville, AL[/url] where we will also be conducting the first [url=/news/2013-03-29/announcing-the-schmooze-certified-reseller-program-for-freepbx-and-pbxact]Certified Reseller Program Testing[/url] for those interested in doing such. Whether interested in that or not, the class will continue its legacy of detailed in depth FreeBPX and Asterisk training that has been so well received. Also, with 2.11 just behind us, here’s you chance to try and convince us of that next feature that you really want to see happen in the upcoming release, over drinks maybe:)

For now, we hope to see you in Huntsville. There’s still space available but the training facility is smaller then others we’ve done classes at so we will be limited once capacity is reached!

I am going to try and start a weekly Saturday morning technical blog about some cool Tip or Trick you can do with FreePBX that most people are not aware of. As anyone who knows me over the years spelling and grammar are not by strong suite so please do not take offense if you find mistakes. I am here to try and provide valuable technical information.

If you have any request for things you would like me to go more indepth on please feel free to comment here and I will see if I can cover it for you in a future blog.

In this first series I am going to show you how you can setup a BLF button to monitor a voicemail box of any user on your FreePBX system. In the past this feature was not possible as Asterisk has no native ability to let a BLF button subscibe to a voicemail box and display when their are 1 or more waiting new voicemails. If you are using FreePBX 2.11 and the FreePBX Distro this feature is now possible.

A asterisk custom dev state hint for each voicemail box will now be auto created. If you log into the Asterisk CLI and issue the following command you will see the hint for each voicemail box called xxx@dialvm

core show hints

In our example above voicemail box 101 has a hint created that you can program any BLF button to as *98101. Now anytime voicemail box 101 has one or more new messages waiting the BLF light will be activated on your phone. Pressing the BLF button will prompt you to login with the password for voicemail box 101.

Now you can finally setup that general voicemail box and add a button to any phone that needs to be notified when a new voicemail is left. Thats all thats to it. Hope you find this feature useful.

Also remember to review our new wiki for more indepth information on FreePBX and all things related to the FreePBX Product.